Rangers assistant GM Thad Levine joined KRLD-FM 105.3 on Thursday. Here are some highlights from the interview.

On the offseason thus far:

“A lot of teams are waiting to flesh out possible trades, but they’re all waiting to see how much of a spending bonanza there’s going to be on this free agent market before they commit to any sort of a trade, so everyone’s in a little bit of a holding pattern. We are as well, but we’ve got a lot of irons in the fire and we're ready to strike once the dam breaks.”

On this offseason compared to others:

“I think unlike offseasons like the last couple where we only had one or two bona fide holes to fill, we have 10 free agents this offseason. We have a lot of the team to remake and think there’s some obvious areas where we can improve. … We’ve kind of shifted the last couple of years from being more of an offensive-centric team to being more about pitching and defense. We’re prepared to balance that out a bit more but quite frankly if the opportunity presents itself for us to continue down that path and improve the pitching even more than it already is, we’re open to doing that as well.”

On Rougned Odor being named the No. 1 prospect in the organization:

“He is a lot of fun to watch play the game, somewhat like Profar in that he doesn’t overwhelm you with any one of his tools but he’s just a winner. … He’s a lot of fun to watch play. He’s this consummate overachieving guy who just finds his way into every winning situation in the game and you walk away after watching him play three to five games and you think, ‘Wow, that’s a tremendous player.’ I think the game and the industry has really started acknowledge these types of guys. … Teams out there are smart to ask on him. I don’t think he’s going anywhere though.”

On whether the Rangers’ biggest move will be in a trades or free agency:

“I think one thing that we’re all feeling throughout the industry is the ripple effect from the new collective bargaining agreement, which does somewhat restrict our spending through the draft and the international. So I think the effect we’re seeing is teams are coveting prospects even more, so trades are tougher to come by, but they’re also unfortunately overpaying free agents because you don’t have to pay any of those assets to get it. So there’s a little bit of an unknown right now as to how much some of these free agents are going to go off the board for. I think from an ideal standpoint we’d always prefer to spend the money than spend the assets, but realistically we’re probably going to have to do a blend of the two.”